President Trump Orders High Honor for Barbara Bush After Her Death – ‘As a Mark of Respect…’

When she died on Tuesday, former first lady Barbara Bush was the matriarch of one of the most powerful political dynasties the country has ever seen, and one that had deep personal and political differences with President Donald Trump.

But in the face of the great equalizer of death, the president put political differences aside.

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In a statement released shortly after Bush’s death was announced, Trump ordered flags to be flown at half staff at all federal buildings, military posts, Navy ships and embassies abroad until sunset the day of Bush’s burial.

“On this solemn day we mourn the loss of Barbara Bush, an outstanding and memorable woman of character,” the statement read. “As a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, military spouse, and former First Lady, Mrs. Bush was an advocate of the American family.”

“Mrs. Bush lived a life that reminds us always to cherish our relationships with friends, family, and all acquaintances. In the spirit of the memory of Mrs. Bush, may we always remember to be kind to one another and to put the care of others first.”

First lady Melania Trump issued her own statement on the death of her in the White House, and made sure to mention the Bush family — and Barbara Bush’s inherent patriotism.

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“Our hearts are with the Bush family as we celebrate the life and mourn the loss of Barbara Bush. Throughout her life, she put family and country above all else. Her dedicated service to the American people was matched only by her compassion and love of family. She was a woman of strength and we will always remember her for her most important roles of wife, mother, and First Lady of the United States. My heartfelt condolences and prayers are with the Bush family as we honor her legacy.”

That’s how adults handle matters like this.

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No one has forgotten the battles of 2016, when Donald Trump tangled with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, among others, for the Republican nomination. It was a bitter fight, and Barbara Bush was on her son’s side with her usual strength of character.

(Expect the liberal media to make a lot of her 2016 quote about Trump: “I don’t know how women could vote for someone who said what he said about Megyn Kelly.”)

But beyond politics, Barbara Bush was a popular figure. The rest of the country cheered along with the crowd at Houston’s NRG Stadium when she and former President George H.W. Bush performed the coin toss before Super Bowl LI in 2017.

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Trump’s order isn’t unheard of, but it is rare. As an NBC report from 2016 on the death of Nancy Reagan noted, there is no strict protocol for a former first lady’s funeral arrangement, and flags at half staff are not the rule at all:

“It apparently wasn’t done for Betty Ford, who died in 2011, according to an NBC News review of presidential proclamations. It was done for Lady Bird Johnson in 2007, but not for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994 or Pat Nixon in 1993. (Onassis and Nixon did get 30-day mourning periods at the White house, though.)”

So Trump wasn’t obligated by either law or custom to go the extra step and order the nation’s flags lowered in honor of a woman best known as the matriarch of a rival political family. But he extended the honor anyway.

And while liberals disgraced themselves yet again by a social media storm attacking a tiny inconsequential typo in the original White House statement announcing Bush’s death — as documented approvingly by the liberal Huffington Post — the Trump order showed that even in 2018, political differences can take a second place to acknowledging a rival’s patriotism.

Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade over 30 years to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.